Story: Quarantine V

The story below is a work of fiction.

One of three birds has been waking me up in the morning. Windows open–rude awakenings are my unjust reward, straight from the bosom of Mother Nature, for allowing her to get closer to me. Their calls are words. One says “Germany, Germany, Germany.” The other says “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.” The third doesn’t talk but makes retro-futuristic laser gun noises. I never hear all three simultaneously. What if it’s the same bird. What if they are in rotation like factory workers in shifts. Punching the clock, calling each other “boss,” nude lady-bird photos tacked up in their lockers. Secretly advanced industrial bird society, biding their time until the humans are gone. Someone should write that story.

I attended a surprise virtual party on Zoom last night, organized by my mom, to celebrate my new promotion. About a dozen people not in my family showed up. How the hell did she manage this. My mom, who doesn’t want anything to do with something made after 1970, did this. Is she on a new medication.

A manager from where I used to work showed up. She seemed much older at the time I worked with her, but little of her aged now. Was she a vampire. I always thought she was pretty in an Armenian street food gypsy kind of way. In other words, “I’d let her pick my pocket.” She was very short—maybe it was something with my angle of sight and the thing with her Draculan widow’s peak. Her mentolabial sulcus aimed up at me and how it seemed to curl around when she talked. Near-constant neutral cyborg facial expression that I imagined writhed with jealousy in private after every time I told her I got a new girlfriend. Narrow shoulders, spindly carved-wood arms, sinews twitching with the slightest movement. Pronounced deltoids and infraspinati inherited from generations of women shaving vertical spit-meat. Stormcloud eyes that thundered if she suspected you. Always smelling a bit like cinnamon and lemon shampoo. Completely indiscernable eastern European witch accent to curse you with. Tousled jet black hair with thin, long rivers of gray. Now more gray on Zoom‐the only thing that aged on her. I liked that she didn’t bother with the color.

I hadn’t heard from the gun bird until the riots started this morning. There’s another story in that. Urban centers turning into a Verhoven movie set. Robocop punching petty criminals in the face repeatedly while the livestream lags, then I crawl into the kitchen and log into work. The Word document with the draft of a new project proposal flashed for a nanosecond and was interrupted by a different screensaver.

How in the world do I have two screensavers running at the same time. The second was a spinning galaxy. It took too long to deactivate and my mind wandered. How the hell do we not have a name for our solar system yet. Every damn speck of dust pissing around up there has been named. Even the sun and moon are unofficially Sol and Luna. I researched this. Some chode in a forum said “The Solar System” is our solar system’s name. He capitalized it like that, too. Look, pal: English is my bitch. I (now) get paid to produce written documents. A white-collar worker bird making his way up the factory bureaucracy. My clients are quiet, shaved, well-perfumed managers with the money and connections to have you erased from existence. Don’t chirp away and try to convince me a common noun is a proper one. No one pointed this out to him. In response to his explanation, another poster suggested we petition scientists to name it. Sure, let’s ask the people who come up with gems like “M87” or “WMAP J123051+1223.”

I determined there are only four people in the world who are any good at forum posting. One was a geologist on a recent Proust kick, stationed in the Antarctic. He died while I was writing this. The second is a Guatemalan orphan. Her village just got running water, so she’s a few years away from Internet access. The third is actually split four ways, in roughly equal parts, between four different people across the world. I don’t know who they are. I am the fourth one, but I’ll only be motivated to post in forums after Robocop stops over and blows those three birds away. Does he even do commission work.